The Texas man suing over his ex-wife’s alleged abortion tried using the litigation to extort his ex-wife into “sleep[ing] with him and perform[ing] his household chores ... despite the fact that they divorced in early 2023,” according to a new court filing.
Marcus Silva filed suit in March against three friends of his ex-wife, Brittni Silva, accusing the friends of helping her obtain abortion pills last summer to illegally terminate an unwanted pregnancy in violation of Texas’ harsh anti-abortion laws.
Two of the friends countersued Marcus Silva in May, alleging that he actually knew about his ex-wife’s plans before she took the medication and was simply using his lawsuit to manipulate and abuse her as he did throughout their relationship. His previous actions led Brittni to call police to the Silva home twice, according to court documents.
In a Tuesday filing asking a Galveston County judge to either dismiss the case or at least not require her cooperation, Brittni Silva affirmed her friends’ claims and offered additional detail about the situation.
“So now he’s saying if I don’t give him my ‘mind body and soul’ until the end of the divorce which he’s going to drag out, he’s going to make sure I go to jail for [getting the abortion],” Brittni Silva texted her friends last year, according to the filing.
Marcus Silva allegedly wanted Brittni to “play wife” until the divorce was final, the filing stated. She initially agreed, “fearing for her and her young daughters’ wellbeing,” it said.
The divorce was settled in January, around eight months after Brittni filed it.
But Marcus allegedly continued to demand sex and domestic favors from his ex-wife, and he filed his suit against her friends around two months later.
In a transcript of a June 21 conversation included in the new filing, Marcus threatened to upload a sexual video of his ex-wife to Pornhub, adding that he was prepared to do things that would “f*ck [Brittni’s] entire f*cking world up,” such as send the video directly to her family members ― unless she continued to do his laundry.
From the transcript:
MARCUS SILVA: You’re not considering what can happen to you if I continue to do this sh*t for the next 40 years.
BRITTNI SILVA: Marcus, I’m not gonna be f*cking blackmailed into having sex with you.
MARCUS SILVA: Then you’re just gonna have your f*cking life destroyed in every f*cking way that you can imagine to where you want to blow your f*cking brains out.
At another point in the conversation, Marcus Silva revealed he “could not bear the idea of Brittni being with anyone else, telling her, ‘I won’t f*cking let you go’ — all while trying to convince her to sleep with him again,” the filing said.
With his lawsuit, Marcus Silva teamed up with attorney Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of the Texas legislation known as Texas Senate Bill 8, which allows people to sue their neighbors if they suspect them of facilitating an abortion.
Brittni Silva is not named in the suit, and her recent filing heavily references her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.